The comments come following this week's announcement by federal science minister, Senator Kim Carr, that Dr Megan Clark - currently Vice President Health, Safety, Environment, Community and Sustainability at BHP Billiton - will become the new chief executive of CSIRO.

"She takes a strategic, multidisciplinary view of innovation and that's just what we need," says Carr.

"Her vast leadership experience in the development and application of science and technology in a business environment will be an invaluable asset for the CSIRO and the nation."

Clark will replace Dr Geoff Garrett, whose term ends on 31 December.

Garrett's controversial leadership is widely seen as shifting CSIRO towards a focus on short-term research with a commercial outcome.

CSIRO has also suffered a loss of government funding in real terms, and a decline in staff morale, say commentators.

Clark's appointment has been welcomed by the CSIRO staff association who call on her to boost the organisation's funding and "bring much greater respect for the knowledge and experience of staff" in internal decision-making.

The call for Clark to act as an advocate for better government funding of CSIRO is echoed by many, including former chief of CSIRO Division of Entomology, Dr Max Whitten.

"I think one of the challenges for Megan Clark is to get Kim [Carr] to ... show that he really cares about CSIRO like he cares about his green car program," he says.

And Whitten agrees Clark needs to listen closely to the views of staff to ensure she understands what motivates them to make the organisation successful.

Matrix management

Whitten says the imposition of "matrix management" in CSIRO appears to have had a negative impact on staff.

"To me its code for something that's in Brownian motion - people are not sure where they fit into it," he says.

Whitten says technicians have been taken out of permanent teams and placed into pools and this has "dehumanised" the research process.

"There is a serious morale problem within the organisation over a sense of identity," he says.

Whitten thinks the CSIRO National Research Flagships - designed to bring together a wide range of skills to deal with big issues - have partly contributed to this.

Commercial focus

Whitten also says he hopes Clark strikes a good balance between the research needs of different industries and long-term fundamental "blue sky" research.

He says the organisation has become "distracted" by chasing revenue from intellectual property.

"I hope she [Clark] recognises there are multiple pathways through to getting a return on your buck which is not just through royalties."

Whitten says he doesn't know Clark personally but says she is obviously an eminent scientist and "certainly stacks up well".

"It could well be an inspired choice," Whitten says of Australia's first woman head of CSIRO.

Juggling allegiances

Another challenge for the new chief executive will be how she juggles her allegiances to the government of the day and the CSIRO board, says long-term science writer Dr Peter Pockley.

Pockley writes for Australasian Science magazine and came into conflict with CSIRO management over his coverage of changes in the organisation under Garrett.

"The chief executive of CSIRO really has a bifurcated line of command," he says. "He or she... has to be responsible to the minister and to the board," he says.

Pockley says this "strange situation" had constrained CSIRO climate change scientists in the past, because their views did not suit government policy.

"I think this will be a challenge which the incoming chief executive will be facing from day one," he says.

Pockley says despite the science minister's promise to establish charters of scientific independence for organisations such as CSIRO, these have yet to be established.

'Drop the spin'

Julian Cribb, who was head of CSIRO communication for six years says, the organisation needs to be more open and less controlling of the media.

"CSIRO has fallen into the trap of trying to promote itself as if it were a private sector corporation instead of a research entity owned by the people of Australia and funded by the people of Australia," says Cribb.

"It's got to get out of this manipulative spin mode of communication."

Cribb says CSIRO should instead focus on talking "honestly, truthfully and strongly" about its science.

Like Whitten, Cribb also thinks CSIRO currently spends too much time and money on lawyers trying to protect intellectual property, and this slows down science driving industry.

"You measure science by its impact not by the number of patents it's got."

A spokesperson for CSIRO says Clark is not fielding media queries on her new role because she is not yet in the job. Her five year term at CSIRO will begin in January 2009.